Coaching Athletics

By David

It’s fun being on holiday in New Zealand. Best of all it is an opportunity to catch up on a decade of lost gossip. Last night I spoke to Dick Quax, once the track world record holder at 5000 meters and Olympic silver medalist at the same distance. Dick is now a pretty important politician and will shortly stand in the election for representatives to run the new Auckland super city. He’s a member of the Act Party which would normally put him too far to the right to attract my vote. On this occasion I’d compromise principle to give him a vote; he’s a good guy and would do an excellent job. Besides I voted for Margaret Thatcher the first time she was leader of the British Conservatives; so there is a precedent.

Years ago Dick coached track athletics in the US. It was fun to compare notes of my experience doing the same thing in swimming. We agreed on the good, the bad and the ugly. But that’s for another day. Eventually our conversation got around to coaching in New Zealand; the death of Arthur Lydiard, Arch Jelley’s appointment to the Coaching Hall of Fame and the comparison between the two coaches.

After we finished talking, I decided to Google Arthur and Arch to see if anyone had written a comparison. There was surprisingly little to find. However I did come across an article written by Joseph Romanos for the June 2007 issue of the New Zealand magazine “VO2 Max” [Warning: large PDF file. If clicking through, you’re looking for page 114, which looks like this].  In it Joseph makes the following observation:

“Trying to evaluate the impact of an elite level coach, two factors become most important – longevity and the number of high-class performers the coach produces. So, while I salute Arch Jelley for coaching such a remarkable runner as John Walker, the athletics coach who gets most credit must be Arthur Lydiard. Lydiard coached for half a century from the early 1950s, and revolutionized thinking on training for distance runners. He was innovative and inspirational. To produce one champion is quite something, but Lydiard coached Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry Magee, John Davies, Bill Baillie, Jeff Julian and Ray Puckett in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Later he coached runners like Dick Tayler and Heather Thompson and advised Ian Ferguson and company, the canoeing legends of the 1980s, plus triathletes, swimmers, horse trainers, rugby players and goodness knows who else.”

Before commenting on the shortcomings of this extract I must tell you that Joseph Romanos is the best writer on sport in New Zealand. He writes well, he knows sport around the world and he’s fair. When I was last coaching in New Zealand I made my share of mistakes and had some wins as well. On several occasions Joseph publically pointed out both in full and fair measure. I should also say that the balance of his article in “VO2 Max” is very good. Joseph praises the long line of coaches that have served New Zealand’s athletes well. There are of course some names he’s included among the greats that I don’t think should be there and some names he’s left out that should have received a mention; Ross Anderson in swimming for example. For some reason Joseph never liked Ross Anderson but the man was a very good swimming coach.

The article also makes the point that coaches in New Zealand have not always been treated terribly well. Isn’t that the truth? The single biggest difference I noticed between coaching here and in the US was the status, respect and importance the Americans give their coaches. I couldn’t believe it. From what I’ve seen New Zealand is improving. That’s important. Good coaches produce good athletes. They need looking after.

So while there is much to admire in Joseph’s “VO2 Max” piece the paragraph copied above falls well short of Joseph’s normal high standard. First of all he leaves the impression that Arch coached for five minutes and Walker was his only good runner. That’s just not true. Arch is in the 85-90 years Master’s category now and in 2010 still produced the national 1500 meter champion, Hamish Carson. For longevity Arch is in the super league. Joseph then produces a list of great athletes coached by Arthur but, apart from John Walker, fails to mention any of the fine runners coached by Arch. For example, double Olympians Neville Scot, Robbie Johnson and Rod Dixon or American mile record holder Steve Scott; or the following athletes who were either National Champions or represented New Zealand, Alison Wright, Ian Babe, Ian Studd (Commonwealth Games bronze medalist in 1966), Sonia Barry, Denis Norris, Ray Batton, Maree Bunce, Andrew Campbell, Sharon Higgins, Michael Hindmarsh, Glenys Kroon, Jared Letica, Geraldine MacDonald, Gary Palmer, John and Val Robinson, Hazel Stewart, Mark Tonks and Lloyd Walker. And that’s not a bad list of “high class performers”.

Joseph then refers to Arthurs work with swimmers. Now that’s true. Arthur even included a chapter on the work he did with me in his biography “Arthur Lydiard – Master Coach”. Without Arthur’s input I would never have coached nine national representatives, four Olympians and one current Master’s world record holder. But the same thing exactly could be said about Arch. Every day I apply many of the principles and methods I first learned from Arch; especially as they relate to speed work and anaerobic conditioning. My swimmers have Arch to thank for their fartlek sessions and the 6×50 on a minute final time trial. Most importantly Arch curbed my enthusiasm for killing swimmers off with impossibly difficult anaerobic sets.

The real problem in a discussion like this is leaving the impression that one is devaluing Arthur’s legacy. I would never do that. Four of the New Zealand runners mentioned by Joseph were Olympic medalists. The work Arthur did in Finland earned him that Country’s highest awards. The care and attention he paid to helping me was generous beyond belief. My point is only that Joseph Romanos should not promote Arthur’s record by devaluing either Arch’s longevity or coaching record. Arthur Lydiard would never have done that.

  • Totally unrelated to article: I had forgotten that the Act Party existed.